


The Hungry House

by chiiyo86



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Creepy house, Gen, Haunted Houses, Horror, Statement Fic, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-12 08:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16869565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: Statement of Annie Leroy, regarding a house where she lived for three months, from August to October 2010. Original statement given April 6th 2011.





	The Hungry House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infernal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/gifts).



> This fic is supposed to take place in the space between season one and season two, before Jon starts investigating the tunnels, because I didn't want to do anything plot-heavy but I wanted to put the fic at a moment when Jon has softened from his initial dislike of Martin. I've always wanted to write a statement fic and I'm glad for the opportunity to do it. The story was inspired both by my watching _The Haunting of Hill House_ and stories one of my friends told me about a house where she lived for a few months with her boyfriend. I kind of freaked myself out writing this fic, but then I'm a wimp so it doesn't mean the fic is super scary - hopefully it's adequately scary. Hope you enjoy it!

**Case #0110604 - “The Hungry House”**

[CLICKS]

**ARCHIVIST**

Statement of Annie Leroy, regarding a house where she lived for three months, from August to October 2010. Original statement given April 6th 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

**ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)**

I have always been a rational person. Everyone I’ve ever been acquainted with has commented on it: “Annie is so down to earth,” people would say, “She has a good head on her shoulders,” and other similar platitudes. It was a point of pride for me. Even when I was a child, I was the one who would go down to the basement to check the fuses when the power was out. I was never prone to mad fancies; I never wondered what could be lurking in the dark. It never even occurred to me that there was anything to fear about the dark, except for the fact that you’re more likely to trip over something when you can’t see.

Elena used to say that this was one of the things that had attracted her to me. She said that I balanced her out. She was my complete opposite, at least on that point. She was terrified of the dark, for instance. Her fears always seemed completely wild to me. She wasn’t afraid that a burglar would break into the house, or a rapist, or a murderer, or anything even a little bit anchored in reality. She would explain to me that when a room was plunged in the dark, for that few seconds before she could find the switch, she often got scared that something would be observing her from the shadows. It was always _something_ , too, rather than someone. In our small, one-storey house in Exeter, where we lived before the… before the _other_ house, every time the pipes would gurgle at night, or the house’s frame would creak, Elena would startle and ask me to investigate. Most of the time I didn’t mind doing it; on the contrary, it made me feel like a hero, foolishly enough. I was Elena’s hero. I always took sensible precautions—I took my phone with me in case I needed to call the police, grabbed a baseball bat and a torch—but there was never anything.

Paradoxically, Elena loved ghost stories, even though they tended to keep her awake at night. I don’t know if she loved the thrill of the fear, the strangeness, or maybe the melancholy attached to most ghost stories. I could never understand it. It just seemed so stupid to me, not that I ever told her that. I don’t even think she believed in ghosts, not fully. But there was a part of her that couldn’t let go of the idea. If I’m telling you all this, it’s so that you’ll understand why I dismissed everything she said about the house for the first few weeks we lived there. I was used to her jumping at her own shadow. The difference—and I’m only realising it now—is that before the house, she was always quick to believe me when I told her that she’d just let her imagination get to her again. She would laugh at her own silliness even more easily than I did. The fact that she acted so serious should have tipped me off that something was really wrong this time.

I guess I should tell you about the house, now. It’s… hard. Not just because of how traumatic my memories of it are, but also because I honestly remember so little about the building itself. This all happened a mere few months ago and I’ve always had a very good memory, but everything about the house is blurry and uncertain. My therapist says I’m repressing the memories. The old Annie would have believed this perfectly reasonable explanation.

The one thing I’m sure of is that Elena had inherited the house from her grand-parents. It was somewhere on Dartmoor, although I can’t remember the exact address. Elena didn’t like the house; she said it had always scared her. I could understand why—from what I remember of it, it was an old, burly stone building that was at least a hundred years old. The architecture was… wonky, somehow. What I remember most clearly is that it had two upper floors and that none of the floors were the same size as the others. Was it because it was built against a hill? Or because rooms had been added after the initial construction? Again, I can’t remember it very well, but I know that it was a real maze. I got lost there almost daily. To get from a point A to a point B—like, to get from our room to the kitchen—I almost never took the same path. I don’t have a good sense of direction, so I was used to getting lost, but it added to the general creepiness of the place.

The thing that seems strange to me now, but that didn’t make me wonder at the time, was that Elena never talked about selling the house, even though she so clearly hated living there. From the moment she’d inherited it after her grand-parents had died—both of them on the same night, in their bed—she decided we would move in and we never discussed any alternative plan. I think I assumed she had some sentimental attachment to it. Her grand-parents had spent their whole lives there; her mother, uncles and aunts had grown up there. Pictures of the whole family at various stages of their lives were all over the house—hanging on the walls, in the stairways, over the chimney mantle. Frozen smiles plastered on their faces, looking at me with their glazed eyes. Elena was an only child but had a big extended family—a lot of uncles, aunts, and cousins. I’d never met most of them, wasn’t even sure how many of them there were. I tried to use the photos to get a headcount, but I never managed a definite answer. It was like new pictures with new faces just popped up every now and then over the night. That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I don’t know why I focus so much on those pictures. There was nothing wrong with them. They were just family photos.

The day we moved in, Elena looked at the house, shivering, and said, “This place has always freaked me out.”

“It’s pretty gloomy,” I agreed.

It was an old house, and old houses tend to crack and make weird noises. This one was no exception. When the wind picked up, the house groaned and howled. I didn’t find it particularly scary, but even I had to admit that the sounds the house made were pretty eerie. I’d never lived in a house that old before, though, so I figured it was normal. It only took a few days for Elena to start changing. I’ve emphasised her vivid imagination and her tendency to get scared at the drop of a hat, but most of the time she was actually a pretty cheerful, good-natured person. By the end of the first week in the house, she was pale and sullen, as well as twitchy, jumping at any sudden noise.

“Did you sleep badly?” I would ask her almost every morning; I slept pretty badly myself, although there wasn’t any obvious cause for it. 

“I had weird dreams,” she would say. 

She didn’t open up about what was bothering her, at first. I guess she thought I would tell her that she was imagining things, maybe even poke light fun at her. She wasn’t wrong, but, you see, before we moved in that house she wouldn’t have minded it if I did. As I said, she liked that I was capable of making her laugh off her fears. So during the first week I watched my girlfriend become more drawn and silent every day, and I had no clue as to what was going on. One day, I got angry at her. I was growing concerned that something was seriously wrong with her and worry tends to make me cross. 

“What’s wrong with you?” I snapped. “Talk to me! Tell me what’s going on!”

She looked at me and said, “I think there’s something in the house with us.”

“Someone, you mean?” I said, even though I knew better. It was always _something_.

She shook her head. “I hear things, and—”

“It’s an old house.”

“No!” she said, sounding frustrated. “I’m not talking about the house cracking. I’ve heard—footsteps in the staircases—it’s not you, it always happens where you’re away or all the way across the house—doors clicking shut, clinking sounds from the dining room, like cutlery against plates, and, and—” Her cheeks reddened, not from embarrassment but from some other emotion—excitement, maybe? “Sometimes I hear someone breathing close to my ear.”

I don’t have to tell you that I didn’t believe her for a second. Or at least, I didn’t think she was experiencing anything that didn’t stem from her imagination. Still, I could tell that it was deeply affecting her and I wanted to make her feel better. So I told her I would look through the house and that if anyone were hiding, I would find them out. Deep down, I knew that it wouldn’t change anything; she wasn’t just afraid of some mundane intruder. 

I was true to my word. I explored every inch of that meandering house, which wasn’t an easy task. I already mentioned how often I would get lost, and it seemed that as I was searching for an hypothetical intruder, it only got worse. I found a lot of old toys, broken pieces of furniture, mouldy clothes, old pictures stacked in boxes, ledgers and letters and old documents. What I didn’t find was any indications that someone was hiding in the house.

As I’d half-expected, it didn’t comfort Elena. “It’s _here_ ,” she insisted. There was nothing I could say that would convince her otherwise. 

“What do you think it wants?” I ended up asking, out of arguments to sway her.

“That’s the thing,” she whispered, wide-eyed with fear. “I don’t _know_. This is what scares me the most.” 

Up to that point, I hadn’t had any weird experience in the house. Nothing that I would qualify as unexplainable or supernatural, in any case. The place did give off a weird vibe, though. It was always dark inside, for one, no matter how sunny it was outside. It was cold, too, although I assumed it was because of the thick stone walls. I wasn’t comfortable, living there, but I wasn’t afraid. Not yet, at least.

The morning after Elena and I had the conversation where I tried to reassure her, I woke up early. Elena was still sleeping, which was unusual. I don’t think I’d ever woken up first since we’d moved in. The first thing that struck me was how bright it was in the room, and it took me a few seconds to realise it was because the curtains were open. I always close the curtains before going to bed. I need the room to be dark in order to sleep well. I was certain that I had closed them the night before, but you know how it is with habits: when you’ve done something enough times the memory of doing it gets etched to your brain. The talk I’d had with Elena must have disturbed me to the point that I’d forgot to close the curtains, and I was just remembering all the times I’d done it before. I merely thought, _Oh, the light must be what woke me up so early._

I didn’t tell Elena about it—she was upset enough already—but before I went to bed, I made sure to draw the curtains. The next morning, the light woke me up again and sure enough, the curtains were open. From then on, every morning for the rest of the time I spent in that house, I found the curtains open. I cannot emphasise that part enough. Everything else I have to say about the house is so fantastical that I can’t be sure I didn’t imagine it or hallucinate it, but I’m sure about the curtains. I wouldn’t have forgot to close them for over two months in a row. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of the curtains snapping open. There was never anyone else in the room. I would get up and close the curtains, but they were open again in the morning. There was nothing very scary about it, except that it kept happening and I couldn’t find any rational explanation for it. Or any irrational explanation, really. Let’s say there _was_ something unnatural in the house with us—for what purpose would it play with the curtains? 

Over the next few weeks, Elena started complaining about seeing things on top of hearing things. Silhouettes that she caught out of the corner of her eye, gone too fast for her to be able to describe them, shadows that moved where nothing should have been moving. I’d stopped trying to tell her that it was all in her mind, partly because I knew she wouldn’t listen to me, and partly because I started to experience weird things too, beside the curtains. 

I didn’t see any of the silhouettes or the shadows, except for… well, I’ll get to it later. I didn’t hear most of the noises she claimed she was hearing, but I heard the clinking noises in the dining room. Like the curtain thing, this was odd rather than threatening. I know about the power of suggestion—because Elena had told me that she heard clinking noises, my brain now interpreted some other noise I was hearing as the clinking of knives and forks against plates. It’s such a distinctive sound, though. It wasn’t the plumbing, or the walls, or the roof, or the wind blowing in the attic. I kept hearing it every other day and it never sounded like anything but people having dinner. It clinked and it chinked and it clattered. Sometimes I could swear I even picked up murmured conversations. 

I won’t lie, I was getting pretty unsettled at that point, but I still wasn’t truly scared. Unexplained as they were, the curtains and the clinking were just petty annoyances. They didn’t feel like they could hurt me. The first incident that rattled me happened mid-September, a few days before my birthday. I was alone at the house because Elena was at work. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I’m a translator, so I work from home most of the time. I was in a room on the first floor that I’d claimed as my office, working on the translation of a novel that I’d received a couple of days earlier. I had been working for a few hours and was getting thirsty, so I made my way to the kitchen on the ground floor. If I looked through one of the windows, I could tell that the day was bright and the sky mostly cloudless, and yet it was dark as ever in the house. In the corridor outside of my office the only source of light was the window at the end of it, but even right next to the window the light was oddly dimmed. 

I walked down the corridor, most of my mind on the translation I was doing, when I felt a presence. But no, that doesn’t sound right. If I say that I ‘felt’ something, you’re going to think that it was just my mind playing tricks on me. It wasn’t anything as vague and ill-defined as a ‘feeling.’ What caught my attention was the sound of footsteps, just slightly out of pace with my own, enough that I wasn’t sure of what I was hearing. I stopped walking; the other footsteps stopped too, a fraction second after I did. I started walking again and there it was, that hitch in the sounds of my feet hitting the floor, like someone was behind me, walking almost in step with me. I didn’t turn around to look; I think I was getting genuinely afraid, my heart pounding steadily against my ribs. As I got closer to the window and the light from outside hit me, I could see the elongated shape of my shadow stretching over the carpet. The fuzzy blob that formed the outline of my head was doubled with another head, as though someone was taking a peek right over my shoulder. I waited until I was next to the window to look behind me; it was silly, but it anchored me to see the garden that surrounded the house, with the bubbling stream at the back. There was still a world outside the house. I could access it any time I wanted. When I finally looked, the corridor was empty. I stayed there for a long time, staring dumbly at it, before I manage to shake myself and get down to the kitchen.

We lived in the house until October 2010, and the things I’ve just described happened again and again over the next month and a half. The curtains opening, and the clinking in the dining room, and the steps behind me in the corridor. With time, I sort of got used to it, but it kept me on edge. I was waiting for the incidents to escalate, for _something_ to happen. It was like waiting for a storm to burst—no matter its violence, you know it will be a relief from the hot, oppressive atmosphere. The tension was making me irritable and moody. Elena wasn’t faring very well either: she didn’t seem to be sleeping much and she was losing weight at an alarming speed. She stopped telling me about the things she heard or saw, and I didn’t tell her about what was happening to me. In fact, we barely spoke to each other anymore. Throughout all this, neither of us ever suggested that we move out. It felt like there wasn’t anywhere else to go, like that house was the last one on Earth.

How long could we have kept living like this? I don’t know, but as it was, it all came to a head on a night of October, a few days before Halloween. I was sleeping pretty soundly when Elena woke me up. The first thing I did, even before asking her what was going on, was to glance toward the window. The curtains were open; I had closed them before going to bed, as I did every night. 

“Annie,” Elena whispered to me, her voice thick with panic. “Annie, something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my mind still addled from sleep. 

“Can you hear this?”

I listened for a few seconds. I couldn’t hear anything and I told her so.

“ _Exactly_ ,” she said. 

I immediately understood what she meant: I couldn’t hear anything _at all_. No creak from the house, no burble from the pipes, no night animal noises or whispers from the wind. The silence was absolute except for the sounds of Elena’s harsh breathing and my own heartbeat. 

“Go back to sleep, then,” I said unconvincingly. “Everything’s fine.”

“No, it’s _not_.” She grabbed my arm, her fingernails digging painfully into my skin. “You have to go look. Something’s happening. Annie, I’m scared.”

She hadn’t asked me to do that in a long time and it injected some courage into me. I was still Elena’s hero. I would grab my phone, my baseball bat and my torch, and have a look around. When I found nothing, as I always did, Elena would feel better and so would I.

Even though she’d asked me to go, it took a few minutes to convince Elena to release my arm. Her hands were icy cold and moonlight made her face look corpse-like. This is the last image I have of her: her dark, straight hair hanging limply around her moonlit face, her eyes open so wide I could see a ring of white around the irises. I gave her a kiss, shot her a nervous smile and said, “I’ll be back soon.”

Armed with my baseball bat, clutching my torch in my other hand, with my phone weighing down the pocket of my pyjama trousers, I advanced in the corridor. The beam of light coming from my torch could barely pierce the thick shadows. The more I walked, the more it seemed like the shadows were consuming the light until merely a thinning thread of it remained. I noticed the continuing silence, but it was only when I’d almost reached the stairwell that I realised that I couldn’t even hear my own footsteps; until I was in the corridor that led to my office and then I could hear footsteps, only I knew they weren’t mine because they weren’t timed quite right with my steps. I looked behind me, fully expecting not to see anything, like the dozens of times I’d done it before. I searched the darkness with the feeble light from my torch until the beam caught something, and then my heart stopped. I moved my light up and down so I could take in the entirety of it. 

It was… I want to say it was a man, because it was human-shaped, but it was much too tall to be a man. The top part of it was bulky, as though it wore an overcoat, and it had spidery legs. It wore a top hat and held something long and thin, like a cane. It moved, slowly turning around so as to face me. I couldn’t see the head very well, but I somehow knew it had its back on me before. I stood there, paralyzed, watching it turn around as slowly as a drifting iceberg. A scream had got trapped in my chest and I could feel it tickle the back of my throat. I caught a quicker movement with my torchlight and saw a shrivelled, greyish hand reach out in my direction.

Suddenly I could move again, and I ran. I went back to my room, but Elena wasn’t there anymore. I was mortally afraid of stumbling upon that _thing_ , but I couldn’t let it get to Elena so I left the room again to look for her. I ran and shouted her name, “Elena! Elena, answer me!”

Something called back. “ _Elena!_ ”

It wasn’t my own voice echoing through the house. It actually sounded like Elena, although I can’t be sure. I shut up, but the voice kept calling, “Elena, Elena!” until it sounded teasing, like it was making a mockery of my fear. I started crying at that point, silent tears streaming down my cheeks. I cried from fear, but also from anger and grief, because I knew something terrible had happened to Elena.

I still kept looking for her, hopelessly. I explored all three floors with my weakening torch, bumping against the furniture and tripping over steps in the darkness. The voice stopped calling and the silence came as a relief, until I heard a loud thumping noise boom out.

_Bam, bam, bam._

The thumping stopped, then started again. I pressed a hand against my mouth to stifle a whimper. _Bam, bam, bam._

“What do you want?” I shouted to the house. “Just tell me what you want!”

Nothing answered, except for another row of thumping. I finally figured out that it was coming from the entrance door. Gripping my bat so tightly that it hurt my fingers, I headed for the door and opened it so carefully it was excruciating, keeping most of my body behind it as a protection.

A man stood outside the door. There was nothing noteworthy about him—he was in his late twenties, dark-haired, wearing a battered leather jacket. He said he was my neighbour from a few miles away, and that he’d got mail he thought was mine. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what he was saying, to be honest. I was too busy staring over his shoulder, blinking against harsh sunlight. From the position of the sun, it looked like it was the middle of the day. I could tell that the man felt a little awkward about catching me in my pyjamas, and even more awkward as he kept talking and I couldn’t muster an answer for him.

I left the house as soon as the man was gone. I went back to my parents in Plymouth. When I finally went to the police about Elena’s disappearance, I found that I couldn’t even give them directions to the house. I would have thought that it would make me a prime suspect, but I don’t think they believed me at all when I said my girlfriend had gone missing. Elena’s parents and grand-parents were dead, and none of her extended family appeared to worry about her whereabouts. I think she’s gone for good. No, I _know_ that she’s gone for good, and don’t ask me how I know that. Someone should be trying to find her anyway; no one deserves to vanish without a ripple, Elena least of all. But I can’t be the one looking for her.

I used to be such a rational person. Now I’m the kind of woman who keeps the lights on in every room of her small apartment. I never go out after dark. And I wake up several times a night to compulsively check that my curtains are still closed.

**ARCHIVIST**

Statement ends.

A lot of in this statement is difficult to check. Elena Jones has actually gone missing around October 2010—she stopped coming to work, at least, but she wasn’t friends with any of her co-workers, or close to her family and no one but Annie Leroy seems to have—

[DOOR OPENS]

**ARCHIVIST**

[SIGHS] What is it, Martin?

**MARTIN**

Nothing, I was just… checking on you, to see if you were fine or needed anything… Do you need anything?

**ARCHIVIST**

No, I don’t. It’s the third time you’ve checked on me today. I’ve been fine every other time, and I’ll continue to be fine.

**MARTIN**

Well, you’ve just come back from the hospital, and I know you’re going to push yourself too hard if someone doesn’t…

**ARCHIVIST**

Martin, I’m recording a statement, so if you could…

**MARTIN**

Oh, right, sorry, I didn’t see the tape recorder there. I—I’ll just go, then.

[DOOR CLOSES]

**ARCHIVIST**

All right, where was I… Elena Jones’ address was still noted to be the house in Exeter that she shared with Annie Leroy before they moved to that other unidentified house. We obtained a record of Annie Leroy’s statement to the police when she declared Elena Jones missing, but the police didn’t take it seriously and no real investigation was conducted. Reading through the statement, I can understand why they didn’t. It’s a lot more confusing than the statement she gave to the Magnus Institute, and only results in making her seem unhinged. With such a vague description and no way to locate the house precisely, we couldn’t find the neighbour that Annie Leroy said knocked on her door the day Elena Jones went missing. Miss Leroy…

[DOOR OPENS]

**MARTIN**

Um, sorry to bother you again, but how would you like a cup of tea? I was just making tea for myself and I thought…

**ARCHIVIST**

Martin.

**MARTIN**

You’re not finished recording, are you? I’m sorry, I’ll—

**ARCHIVIST**

A cup of tea sounds lovely, actually. I’ll have one, please, but only if you’re already making tea for yourself.

**MARTIN**

Oh. Great! That’s great. Are you almost finished?

**ARCHIVIST**

In a few minutes.

**MARTIN**

Okay, I’ll be back in ten minutes with your tea.

**ARCHIVIST**

Thank you, Martin.

[DOOR CLOSES]

Miss Leroy moved to Australia in 2012 and refused to give us a follow-up interview. The few relatives of Elena Jones’ that we managed to track down remembered the house but were as incapable as Annie Leroy of giving us an address or precise directions, which marked the end of our investigation.

Recording ends. 

[CLICKS]

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't write the fic with a specific power in mind, because it was more fun for me to try and write a fic that I would personally find creepy rather than to shove it into a box (especially since the show's classification of the powers is supposed to be pretty fluid anyway). So it can be related to any power you want!


End file.
